Late today the review for the latest book will be up, but in the mean time why not check out an excerpt from the book and grab a copy for yourself!
HAYLEY
CAUGHT her hat as a strong breeze blew onto the deck. She shoved the
brim in her pocket, pulled her red curls into a ponytail and kept her
eye on the camera screen as an iceberg floated down the glacier-carved
fjord. The sun bounced off the blue glass as it bobbed in the sea, the
summer light shimmering as if the water was a celestial globe. She
pressed the shutter release but by the time the camera processed the
picture and took the photo, the image was blurry. Why did she ever think
of doing this?
Minutes
earlier the glacier had released the clear blue ice with a sound louder
than a cannon blast. She had watched in awe as it calved and cascaded
into the thin arm of the bay, pushing water onto the glacial plateau,
rocking the smaller ice pieces around it. An iceberg had been born
before her eyes.
Hayley
looked toward the maze of islands and coves that stretched along the
Inside Passage. These were the moments she lived for - the raw beauty of
the wilderness stirred a longing deep inside of her each time she stood
in its midst. To her, nature was a kindred spirit and since she was a
teen, she’d
lived to protect it, from picketing at zoos to chaining herself to
trees to protest against clear-cuts. That passion had led her to
investigative reporting and she had covered the environment beat ever
since.
She
turned back to her camera. She had been in such awe of the moment, that
she missed taking a photo and now struggled to capture the iceberg in
some fashion. Words were her ability, to describe a moment rather than
take a static image, but her prose wasn’t
valued anymore. In the last round of cuts at the newspaper, her job
landed on the chopping block. They no longer needed an environmental
reporter - the stories from the wire were good enough.
To
her dismay, the only job she could land was in public relations - she
had crossed to the other side. And of all things, she was assigned a
cruise ship company. Not only had she left her meaningful beat behind,
she was now covering luxury travel, far from the world she had vowed to
protect. Hayley spent years journeying to destinations, uncovering a
story, or highlighting an area with natural heritage features, but in
her new PR position she had an endless laundry list of tasks: photograph
daily scenic shots, attend the workshops, interview the crew, plan the
media trip with the photo workshop leader.
While
her client was dining with the captain, she was running all over the
ship to deliver the requested photos on time. And worse was, she didn’t
have a creative eye. Some people could write music, others could dance
to any beat, and photographers could capture a moment in one single
image. She never could and always relied on publicity photos for her
articles.
Yet
she needed the job. She had a mortgage, car payments and college debt
to pay. She had to hold onto the position at least until she found
something better.
What
made it worse was the client. Blake Harrison. The name already sounded
harsh. He made it seem as if the free cruise was a big perk, yet with
the workload she wouldn’t get much time to relax. On top of it, he didn’t
cover any expenses and only dangled the carrot of a one-year contract
if the cruise went well. She had to cobble together the money for the
plane ticket to Vancouver and didn’t have much left over for a good camera. She had bought a cheap digital hoping
it would do the job. She spent the first few days learning how to use
it and then realized its deficiencies. It was slow in capturing images
no matter what speed she set it for - how would she ever get the
wildlife pictures she needed? And she never knew she had a shaky hand -
all the years she wrote for the paper, if she used a camera, it was
their top of the line models that had an image stabilization feature.
She
looked over to the man on her right. He had more than one camera body, a
large format camera in his hand and then a Nikon with a telephoto slung
over his shoulder. After so many years of holding down a steady job,
one in which she won awards, it was hard to believe that she was
starting over. Her life had been set, and then the entire global economy
got turned on its side and her industry took the biggest fall. At times
it seemed her life was coming apart and there was no way she could hold
it together. It was at moments like this that she felt tears building
up, and she pressed her lips together to fight them off. It was so
unprofessional, in the middle of strangers on the deck of a ship, on a
work assignment, but lately she couldn’t
control her emotions. She had dipped into her savings and was at the
brink of financial collapse, not knowing where she would live or get
health insurance from. The pressure month after month had become too
much and she worried how she would cobble her life together.
She
looked back to the sea, where the iceberg had turned exposing a large
gap in the shape of a heart. Two thin arms of ice reached out to form an
arch above the turquoise water. She felt small in the presence of these
large cities of ice, these mountains that folded into the distance. It
made her life and her problems seem inconsequential in the grander
scheme of things.
The
glacier was built one snowflake at a time, over thousands of years and
it had now come to the end of its lifecycle, gracefully floating to
whatever awaited it. Mammoth next to the ship, but the size of an ice
cube when it reached the open ocean, it was changing, sliding to the
edge, holding on, and then breaking, tumbling into the sea, sloshing
about till it found solid footing in a new environment.
How
unlike this piece of ice she herself was. It might float for years,
enduring elements as it traveled along the coastline. It would
eventually melt, bit by bit, erode and be forgotten. Would her life be
much different? In time, her work would be cast aside, buried in
cyberspace, nullified among more timely articles. Nor did her life
matter to anyone but herself and her cat. She would be forgotten.
This
is why she found solace in nature. It talked to her without a word.
Thoughts slipped into her mind and found a home, made sense. There were
times, in fact, that she found she was more interconnected with nature
than people.
Hayley
dropped her chin into the wide collar on her jacket and turned back to
her camera bag. She pulled out an old tripod and started extending the
legs. It was the one good thing about this cruise - when she was out in
nature, she forgot the rest of her life. Even if she was stuck behind a
camera lens for some of the next two weeks, she was still close to the
one element that soothed her.
“Don’t bother setting up your tripod.”
The voice pulled Hayley out of her thoughts and she looked toward the man with broad shoulders and a pointy face. “I always use one.”
“You’ve never shot on a ship before.”
“Of course I have,” she
lied, fumbling with the tripod legs splayed on the deck. She was in a
time crunch to get a shot of the ice slab before the ship turned.
“It’s a moving platform.”
“I’ve got lots of space,” she
said curtly. She looked beyond him, toward the fjord that stretched
into the distance, then at his long lens and bulky camera bag. Perhaps
he did know something.
“True but you’ll be buffeted from the wind.” He pointed his chin toward the fast-moving clouds, his windbreaker billowing from the breeze. “It will be useless.”
“I have an anchor,” she said sharply and hung her bag to the center post. She walked toward the other end of the deck to scout a scenic shot.
“Don’t leave your camera unattended.”
She didn’t
have time to be interrupted - she had to get a good image and deliver
it to her client in an hour. She threw her arms out toward the water
surrounding them. “What? Someone’s going to run off with it?”
“I never leave my camera unattended.” He wrapped his long fingers around the body of his camera. “It’s too expensive.”
“Never say never.”
He
paused for a moment. At the top of his head, a small patch of bald skin
glistened in the afternoon sun that poured over the mountainous coast. “I never leave my camera.”
She rolled her green eyes. The man irritated her but the scenery was so beautiful that she didn’t want to leave the deck and miss something.
He walked toward her, then dug around in his bag and handed her a camera. “I used to shoot with this.”
“It’s old.”
“But good quality.”
He
pushed his sunglasses onto his forehead, and showed her the camera
settings. He had soft blue eyes, the color of the ice floating past
them, and his long face led to a warm smile. Then he handed the camera
to her. “Go get that iceberg.”
HAYLEY’S
PONYTAIL bobbed from side to side as she walked toward the bow. Trevor
watched her kneel next to her backpack and remove a filter. Even though
she was tiny, her fiery curls gave her away from across the boat.
She
rested her elbows on the railing and took a photo, then checked it in
the viewfinder. A smile spread across her face and she turned to him
with a thumbs-up. She walked further down the deck and took more
pictures.
He
knew the pressure of getting a good photo and could sense it a mile
away. Besides, he had watched her for a while that afternoon. She seemed
to be a perfectionist, muttering to herself and criticizing each shot
she took. In time, she had stressed herself so much that it seemed
nothing was working.
And
then, the iceberg drifted by and she lowered her camera in awe. He
heard her talk to it as if it were a human, and then she murmured over
and over, “Stay strong,” and,
as she did, her shoulders dropped. Trevor edged closer to her, drawn to
the exclamation and the wonder in her expressions. She wasn’t
the only one susceptible to the iceberg - the lower deck was crowded
the moment the iceberg calved with a loud boom, and when he looked down
all he witnessed was a maze of hands pointing, and then the gasps and
shouts. But among that chaos there was a sense of peace with this woman,
as if she had stepped into a bubble of calm. She said, “Stay strong” one
more time and at that moment, he felt a warmth spread through the palm
of his hand. The unthinkable had happened to Trevor. The entire time the
iceberg had drifted by, he hadn’t taken one photo. Not one.
It
seemed she had come to the realization at the same moment and fumbled
with her camera. He focused his zoom lens and took a few photos, then
turned back to her. It was then that he mentioned the tripod, and in
doing so, seemed to pop her out of the magical bubble she was in. It
didn’t surprise him when she got defensive - perfectionists always did.
Trevor
looked back toward the woman who now leaned her chin on the far
railing, watching. He zipped up his bag and jotted down a note, then
speared it on the hook of her tripod’s center post. It read: “Play with the camera this afternoon. I’ll see you around. -T”
He hadn’t signed his name - he wanted to leave her with an air of mystery.
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